


Treacherous

by rillrill



Category: Silicon Valley (TV)
Genre: Dom/sub Undertones, M/M, Self-Esteem Issues, Sugar Daddy, Writing on Skin
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-08
Updated: 2015-07-08
Packaged: 2018-04-08 06:44:25
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,813
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4294656
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rillrill/pseuds/rillrill
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Because what is ten million dollars to a billionaire? Ten million dollars to a billionaire versus to an unemployed Stanford drop-out? He doesn’t need an economist to tell him the benefits far outweigh the costs. </p><p>After almost an hour of careful, single-minded deliberation, he calls Gavin Belson.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Treacherous

**Author's Note:**

> I think a month ago I promised Richard/Gavin sugar daddy fic based on That Bathroom Scene, and now here it is, because life got in the way but I had to follow through. And here we are. And it shares a title with a Taylor Swift song. And we're all just foraging in the garbage heap of life, right?
> 
> I'm sorry, mom.

It’s like he can’t have just this one good thing.  
  
When he hangs up on Monica, the world starts to constrict. The odd thing is that it isn’t a panic attack proper. He’s had enough to know the difference. This is something else entirely, similar to when he stands up too quickly and the rush of blood to his head makes him briefly question whether anything is real or maybe he’s just a cruel dream someone’s having at this very moment asleep on the other side of town or whether the entire planet Earth and everything on it is just a science project some alien in another galaxy got a C+ on. It’s the strange kind of dizzy, freefalling disassociation that he wishes he weren’t so familiar with.  
  
Richard walks outside and stands under the lemon tree for a good long time, staring at the dark night sky and feeling almost nothing other than sheer, clammy, cold-sweat terror that binds him like a straitjacket.  
  
There’s a number on his phone, one without any contact information attached to it. He knows who it belongs to nonetheless. When he concludes his anxiety attack, piecing himself back together and zipping up his outer self calmly as if he’s an alien putting on his skin suit (and really, in a sense, isn’t he?), he walks back inside. Walks to his bedroom, paces under his loft bed. Because what is ten million dollars to a billionaire? Ten million dollars to a billionaire versus to an unemployed Stanford drop-out? He doesn’t need an economist to tell him the benefits far outweigh the costs.  
  
After almost an hour of careful, single-minded deliberation, he calls Gavin Belson.

 

* * *

  
  
It’s just that he needs this.  
  
He knows how it’s going to go. Gavin’s overtures haven’t been subtle and they haven’t exactly sounded pleasant, but he needs it. He puts on a suit and Youtubes “how to tie a tie” and shows up to the restaurant early to sit in the parking lot for half an hour. Gavin is already seated when Richard arrives. He smirks as the hostess leads him over, flipping his menu over abruptly. When Richard is seated, he steeples his fingers atop the menu and gives him an expectant look.  
  
“So,” Gavin says. “I expect you’ll want to know why I’ve asked you to join me.”  
  
“Not really,” Richard says out of the corner of his mouth. It’s not as brave a move as he’d like it to be, because he’s barely muttering, but Gavin cocks a brow as if he's heard it anyway.  
  
“Calm down,” says Gavin. “Order whatever you like.”  
  
Richard’s stomach twists and he grips his knee with one hand beneath the table. “I’m not really – I don’t think I’m hungry. Gonna keep it light. Maybe a salad.”  
  
“Suit yourself,” Gavin says, picking up the menu again and scanning the page idly. “I’m not going to coddle you or treat you with kid gloves, Richard. I’m not your mother, I’m not your third grade teacher, I’m not your... Jared.”  
  
Richard braves a full three seconds of eye contact as he asks, “What are you going to do to me, then?”  
  
This makes Gavin pause, chuckle, clearly amused by the question. “Is there any particular answer you want to hear?”  
  
_You can’t buy me_ , he thinks. _I proved long enough ago that you can’t buy me or anything I stand for, and you_ _’re still trying_. They’re sitting in some hyperminimalist fusion restaurant where even the air they’re breathing feels expensive, because it’s been infused with imported cherry blossoms from Sapporo according to the menu. And Gavin’s in a suit that looks as nice as any he owns, and his teeth are blindingly white and perfectly straight and look eerily, uncanny-valley-level fake, and he’s still reading the menu as if nothing here is in any way out of the ordinary.  
  
_You can’t have me,_ Richard wants to say, but instead he looks at Gavin and his straight white teeth and the way he’s looking past the menu in his hand, clearly thinking of something else, and he thinks that perhaps he wants to be had.  
  
“I don’t know,” Richard says out loud. And then he surprises himself. “I don’t like you, Gavin. Mr. Belson. G—”  
  
“Good.” Gavin flips over the menu and lays it, blank side up, on the table in front of him. “I don’t need you to like me. I can buy all the affection I want—”  
  
“Or need,” Richard says, surprising himself again.  
  
“I don’t need much,” says Gavin wryly.  
  
_Doubtful_ , Richard thinks, but doesn't say it.

 

* * *

  
  
So curiosity gets the best of him. So he follows Gavin home to his ridiculous billionaire mansion and follows him into a bedroom outfitted in post-technology that looks like something out of a Hunger Games movie, so much to the point that he finds himself looking over his shoulder expecting Jennifer Lawrence to come popping out of a walk-in closet. So he lets this happen because apparently that’s what he does now.  
  
Gavin raises both eyebrows, smiles a half-smile that barely meets his eyes. “Right, then,” he says. Richard can feel himself tense as Gavin reaches out to cup his chin. “Relax,” Gavin says. He tries. He does.  
  
The kiss is strangely soft at first, as if it’s a cold swimming pool that Gavin has to ease himself into. It’s odd, uncharacteristic, Richard thinks, but as he kisses back, it slowly becomes more and more insistent, deepening until it’s all tongue and teeth and Gavin’s wide hand on the back of Richard’s neck. He’s not sure why he’s surprised that Gavin Belson is an incredible kisser, but it comes as a dull shock anyway. There are those straight, intimidatingly white veneers scraping at his bottom lip and another hand slowly rubbing circles on his upper arm, squeezing lighter and then harder, and everything is too much in a way that, to his surprise, he feels entirely capable of handling on his own.  
  
It’s only when Gavin breaks the kiss and chuckles slightly that Richard realizes his eyes have been open the entire time. He wonders if that’s weird? Probably.  
  
“What?” Nervously.  
  
“Richard, you have to relax,” Gavin says. “You don’t have to do this if you don't want to—”  
  
“No, no, I do,” Richard rushes to clarify. “It’s just. I mean. 'Nervous' is sort of my default, ah, setting. Sexually. And in general.”  
  
“So I’ve gathered.” Gavin reaches out and fiddles with Richard’s tie, tugging at the knot slowly with one hand as he strokes the soft skin beneath Richard's right ear with the fingers on the other. The sensation makes him shiver and it also makes him feel rather curiously like a cat being petted. He would rather it didn't stop. “Would it help you if I told you exactly what to expect?”  
  
“Y-yes.” He doesn't mean to stutter, but he does.  
  
Gavin runs one finger down his neck and stops just shy of his shirt collar, provoking another little shiver. “Richard, with your permission, I would like to tie you up. Do you enjoy being hit?”  
  
“I - don't know.” The truth.  
  
A sly smile. “I suppose we’ll find out.”

 

* * *

  
  
  
When he gets back to the incubator, he does his best to avoid the others. It’s late enough that they should all be off doing their own things by now, but Jared and Erlich are still around, and Richard can’t make eye contact with Jared as he ducks his head and darts off to his room and crawls atop his loft bed, unbuttoning his shirt to look at the souvenirs.  
  
A bruise, a scratch; he brought them back here to his nest like a magpie building a collection. He wants more, too, and that’s the worst part; his face burns when he remembers the way Gavin looked at him like a piece of raw meat. Nothing more, nothing less. He wants to collect evidence of the impact, little trophies that will fade in a week’s time and never take up space on his shelves or require dusting (which he would evidently put off and forget entirely).  
  
Because he wishes it didn't excite him in this way. Because he's not—he's not a whips-and-chains guy, he's not even a getting-laid-regularly guy. It's been a while. A decent while.  
  
But Gavin’s words and his breath against the back of his neck in that men’s bathroom feel as though they’ve burned themselves into his brain, and he can’t stop thinking about them, seeing them every time he closes his eyes. He has always hated the part of sex where he’s expected to know what to do. He has always craved this, the part where someone else orders him around and tells him what to do. It’s been too long since he’s had it and now, it’s all come rushing back and it’s like he’s flipped a switch that he knows he’ll never be able to turn off.  
  
He shifts his jaw and closes his eyes and takes a deep breath, staring at the ceiling inches from his face as he lets the wrist he’s just been examining drop to the mattress.

 

* * *

  
  
  
So here’s the other thing: he doesn’t mean to keep letting this happen, and yet.  
  
_And yet._  
  
It’s been three months. He’s stayed at Gavin’s house six times in that space. Erlich is beginning to get suspicious and accuses him of “holding out on the good puss.” Richard laughs nervously and changes the subject.  
  
Jared lays a hand atop his and tells him pleadingly, that if there’s anything he needs help with, if he ever needs to talk to anybody, he should feel safe coming to him. Jared, with those disgustingly honest eyes who looks the dictionary definition of “earnest.” Were Oscar Wilde alive today and living in the Santa Clara Valley, he'd probably title one of his plays _The Importance of Being Jared_. Jared tells Richard that he can trust him and Richard bites his tongue until he tastes blood, both in the literal and the figurative.  
  
_And yet._  
  
It’s been three months and he is no longer the CEO of his own company.  
  
It’s been three months and Gavin Belson is no longer the CEO of Hooli, either. He’s “taken a step back,” transitioned into more of an “as-is” position, all the tech-speak for “demoted in lieu of having good enough contract lawyers to prevent his firing.” And then suddenly, he’s not employed by Hooli at all anymore whatsoever, and Richard doesn’t hear from him for three days until he gets the news in a phone call from Monica that makes him nearly crash his car.  
  
It’s been three months and Raviga, Laurie Bream, and the rest of the controlling shareholders have just installed Gavin Belson as the new CEO of Pied Piper, and Richard doesn’t know what the fuck he’s doing.  
  
Because he feels like he doesn’t deserve any role whatsoever. Because he can’t do this. He’s not built for business, he’s not CEO material. And Gavin makes him pretty promises, fixes his hair and tells him he’s not fired, that he’s going to be even richer than he’s ever thought possible by the end of the year. Gavin recites secondhand wisdom from his guru and then fucks Richard’s mouth and pets his cheek and tells him he’s right where he belongs, and Richard is—he’s inclined to believe it.  
  
“You have nothing to worry about,” Gavin tells him on the day the new CEO appointment is announced.  
  
“No offense,” says Richard, “but that’s not a sentence that has ever proven helpful to anyone like me—”  
  
And Gavin smiles that too-wide killer whale grin, fucking _Blackfish_ of Palo Alto, and Richard hates himself even more.

 

* * *

  
  
And the _other thing_.  
  
They’re in Sweden, just the two of them. Pied Piper’s CEO, Gavin Belson, and managing partner/”chief visionary,” Richard Hendricks are doing TED Europa, and Gavin is giving the keynote talk. But in reality, they’re in a hotel, which is all glass panes and postmodern furniture that doesn’t even attempt to preserve the illusion of privacy, a hidden sanctum from the outside world.  
  
Gavin’s fucked him against the floor-to-ceiling glass twice since they’ve gotten here, and Richard would be idly angling for a third round if he weren’t now laid out across the bed as Gavin bears down on him with a black marker in hand.  
  
“Your code,” he remarks. “Your compression algorithm.”  
  
Richard swallows. “You still—”  
  
“Can you recite it?” Gavin says. “From memory.”  
  
A pause. His mouth is so dry. His fingers twitch as he envisions the keyboard in front of him, pounding out piece by piece. “Yes.”  
  
“Good,” says Gavin. “I want you to do that.”  
  
Richard swallows again and then begins, and watches as Gavin begins to copy his precious code in black Sharpie onto his too-pale skin. He makes mistakes, crosses things out, flips Richard over onto his stomach to continue the litany of code and things crossed out on the wide-open skin of his back, broken only by the small odd mole or freckle.  
  
“Look at yourself,” Gavin says, snapping a picture with his phone and holding it down near Richard’s face to let him take a good look. _Whore_ spreads out in wide letters across the span of his back, and then _bitch_ and _mine,_ all spilling out from between bits of code, not all of which are Pied Piper’s.  
  
_It’s beautiful_ , Richard thinks, his cheeks heating up with shame as he stares at the photo. And then: _it’s all true_.  
  
He looks up over his shoulder at Gavin, who stares down at him, fixed and impermeable. Tightening his jaw, Richard nods, and there’s a crack of a hand against his ass and a slight sting, not even enough to really hurt.  
  
When they’re back in California the words on Richard’s body spill off his torso and onto his arms and threaten to peek out from beneath his sleeves. He puts on a hoodie in the hot, dry late-summer weather and resists the urge to push them up.  
  
He thinks he sees Jared give him a worried look, staring at the space between his palms and the insides of his wrists and the sweat that beads on his forehead when they walk out into the sun. But Jared says nothing. And Richard thinks it’s better that way.

 

* * *

  
  
Because this is it, the crux of it, the thing that keeps him awake at night: Richard can’t be trusted to make his own decisions. And if he can have this one thing, this sacred space where he doesn’t have to, where someone else can extract all the things he hates about himself like blackheads from under his skin and then smack him down until the adrenaline and catharsis take over and make him feel human again, then why shouldn’t he want it?  
  
And if it has to be a secret, then he can live with that. And if it has to be Gavin Belson, then he’ll deal with that too, and drop to his knees in front of crisp black suits worn without neckties and ask the god he doesn’t care enough to believe in and his own conscience for forgiveness.  
  
Because he feels like maybe, this is what he deserves. Because, it turns out, Pied Piper wasn’t worth Belson’s $10 million, but Richard was, and maybe it turns out that he’s not the man of principle he always thought he was. Maybe, definitely, he _can_ be bought.  
  
It’s not the money that troubles him. It’s the sick pleasure in knowing that Gavin sees him as a _thing_ to be acquired, and the reverse pleasure in how much it excites Richard. It’s the way his stomach still jerks and twists when he feels a heavy hand alight on the small of his back, but there’s no panic, no nausea, only the best kind of fear.  
  
_Ten million dollars is a lot of money_ , he thinks, and yet to a man like Gavin, it’s almost nothing. If he’s an object, his own valuation might be anywhere between priceless and worthless, and the not knowing is the part that keeps him up at night. But then he pops one of the sleeping pills Gavin brought him back from Beijing that make Ambien look like Flintstones vitamins. Because he won’t lose sleep over this. Not now. Not tonight.  
  
Ten million dollars _is_ a lot of money. And if he can only have one good thing, he’ll take the money. The sex – the good sex, the sex that leaves him sated and wrecked and wondering if Gavin’s had a chip secretly implanted in his brain to transmit his every turn-on and desire directly into Gavin’s own – that’s just another good thing that apparently comes on the house.  
  
So it has to be a secret. So no one can ever know.

So he can live with this.


End file.
